A new prohibition may be added to the long list of those placed on women in Saudi Arabia: A new sentence according to Islamic law (fatwa) determines that women exiting the doorways of their homes must cover one of their eyes.

The array of prohibitions currently placed upon Saudi women includes forbiddance to leave home without a familial “patron,” fraternize with men in public, drive a car, put makeup on and wear high heels.

The modesty squad on the streets of Saudi Arabia follows women whose abaya (long cloak) is too tight and likely to reveal their curves or those whose hair is visible through their veils.

A senior religious cleric in the country, Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan demands that the rules of modesty be further enhanced.

In the new Islamic legal sentence, al-Habadan announced that when leaving their homes, women must keep only one eye revealed.

According to the sheikh, “revelation of both eyes behind the veil is likely to encourage women to put make-up on and accentuate their eyes. This is corrupt behavior which conflicts with Islamic principles.”

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: A prescient friend of mine told me before 9/11 that the Muslim hatred of the Western world is grounded in the fear Muslim men have of female sexuality. Everything else — alcohol prohibitions, dog prohibitions, etc. — is just static. In apocalyptic fight between Islam and the West, it’s all about sex. And in that regard, keep in mind that the incentive for Muslim men to commit suicide/mass murder is, yes, sex with those 70 luscious virgins (or, possibly, which will be a surprise to them, grapes).

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I think it’s fair to say that Islamic treatment of women may be the most heinous and impactful crime on the planet today.

It’s not genocide in Darfur, true — but I’m not sure other acts of awfulness match the long-term catastrophic impact of removing the talents of over half the population from the world (somebody said back in the day, “All the geniuses born as women are lost to us”) and relegating them to a form of slavery. Aside from the horror of what is done to the women, it significantly reduces a company’s economy and ability to exist in the modern world.

It may have been Thomas Friedman (who is occasionally right, though much less so these days it seems) who pointed out that you can track the success of a non-oil-trust-fund country by how well it treats its women.

If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali…